LACKAWANNA, N.Y. (WIVB) – Many preservationists protested outside the old Bethlehem Steel building otherwise known as the “Diamond of Lackawanna” to prevent its demolition.

The 90 day stay of the demolition order expires this week and a judge will rule again by the end of the month whether the building can be knocked down.

Although people say it employed thousands of people over the years, it hasn’t employed anyone in 30 years.

Windows are smashed, but the deterioration on the outside is nothing compared to what the city officials say is inside.

The city’s code enforcer says the second and third floor ceilings have collapsed and the floors are unstable.

The city has a court order for demolition, but in August, a judge extended a stay 90 days to give the building’s owner more time to file an appeal.

The 90 day stay expires Thanksgiving day and a judge will rule again on November 28th.

The preservationists would like to see the building fixed up and developed into maybe a shopping center, hotel, or restaurants; something to draw people to the area once again.

Andrea Haxton from Lackawanna says, “It’s not going to come back to that or anything, but we have to do something to tie Lackawanna in to all the good stuff happening in South Buffalo here. This would do it for us.”

Preservationist Bill Magavern says he pledged a significant amount of money to restore the building, but is disappointed there doesn’t seem o be a plan of what can be done with it.”It’s very difficult to save a historic building if the owner and municipality are not dedicated,” he says.

Bethlehem, PA – When the sun finally set on this Eastern Pennsylvania city’s most venerable industry in 1995, many thought it would be “lights out” for the community whose fortunes were tied for more than a century to steel making.

The memories of the sprawling Bethlehem Steel plant, and the reputation residents of the Lehigh Valley enjoyed as the region “which built America” remain forever etched in the minds of natives like Jeffery Parks.

“Oh my goodness yes I remember the smoke, the noise, the smells …,” recalled Parks, while glancing at the giant, black, blast furnaces which remain as a testament to days gone by.

Resembling something out of a factory in a Dr. Seuss book, the furnaces stand silhouetted against a sun-splashed sky, silent, and rusting with trees growing through parts of them.

“One stack on each of these blast furnaces was called the Bethlehem Candles,” Parks explained. “And the myth always was that when the candles went out that would be the end of Bethlehem.”

However, where blast furnaces once belched soot into the sky, music now wafts through the air.

An I-beam away from the row houses from which generations of immigrants trooped off to make steel, agrarians now sell vegetables at a popular farmers market.

Across the river from the homes where the wealthy steel barons once lived…and where they now rest in a cemetery overlooking the blast furnaces, the candles remain …no longer burning…but hardly extinguished

“They’re illuminated in a different way today,” Parks said.

By night, bathed in colored light, they are an unusual work of art forming the centerpiece to a table of rebirth.

Welcome to Steel Stacks, a $75 million cultural and entertainment district anchored by ArtsQuest, a complex of movie theaters, nightclubs, and conference centers.

Parks, its chief visionary, now stands as its President and CQO.

“That stands for Chief Quest Officer,” Parks said with a laugh.

What’s no laughing matter is that in just over one year of operation, it’s welcomed more than one million visitors…to a place once given up for dead, now slowly being transformed with artist colonies and eateries.

“There’s a lot of people who are surprised to see us here frankly,” said Parks, not the least of whom, were some folks from Buffalo who happened to be visiting when Two On Your Side went to Bethlehem back in August.

“I think it’s phenomenal what they did to it,” said Amy Barron of Amherst, who with her family had just enjoyed an evening concert at the amphitheater where the blast furnaces form the background to an outdoor stage. “To have the community come down here and listen to concerts and get together I think it’s great,” Barron said.

The redevelopment of the largest Brownfield project in U.S. History has largely occurred over the time that John B. Callahan has served as Bethlehem’s youthful and energetic mayor. Callahan, now 43, had just turned 34 when he was elected in 2003.

“It’s part of our skyline that we didn’t want to see go away…but everything else you see around me didn’t exist even a year and a half ago,” Callahan told WGRZ-TV, as he pointed to various infrastructure improvements installed after years of planning.

Although, how this came to be, literally hinged on the roll of a dice…where they literally hit the jackpot.

“The real spark that allowed us to move forward with even this particular part of the project was the investment on the other end of the site,” explained Callahan, referring to the Sands Casino and Resort, which became a reality when Pennsylvania approved casino gaming in 2007.

The Sands has since become the most financially successfully casino in the state, bringing seven million people to Bethlehem annually.

“Without that investment of over $800 million and the tax revenue that came as a result of that investment much of this would not have been possible,” Callahan said.

That’s because the Casino, like other developers here, pays into something called a Tax Incremental Financing District.

“The property is assessed down at a really low level based on its value before a developer builds on it,” explained Parks. “And the difference between that, and the value after something is added to it, is put into a fund. Those new dollars that are created go back into the site to fund infrastructure in order to facilitate what might come next.”

“We’re not done yet,” said Callahan, ticking off a list of planned or soon to be completed new additions.

There’s a partially finished museum of industrial heritage, and the oldest building on the site has been re-purposed for a visitors center.

There are designs to transform the iconic Bethlehem Steel Administration Building into a 13-story apartment complex

One building, the longest in the country when constructed in 1888, will become an outlet mall, connecting the casino and two new hotels back to Steel Stacks, along a yet to be restored section of elevated railroad which will have a trolley to carry those who don’t care to walk.

When it was suggested to Parks that he didn’t seem like the type of person who says “we can’t”, he replied with a chuckle, “I’ve never heard those two words together.”

The biggest irony of all may be that there was a time when Parks was among those who felt the very anchors of the complex, the blast furnaces, should come down.

“Absolutely. Tear them down. Until 2002 when a group of us went to Germany.”

That’s where they saw, in the Ruhr valley, how former steel mills had been transformed into tourist attractions, with museums, nightclubs and restaurants.

“That’s when the light bulb went on and we said, ‘whoa, you know if you tear these blast furnaces down nobody’s ever going build them again in this country’.”

The blast furnaces are actually owned by the casino, which had also been tempted to divest itself of the relics, according to Callahan.

“The truth be told, the blast furnaces are probably worth more in terms of scrap steel than they are as they stand there today.”

But through a bit of his own steely resolve, Callahan tempered that thought shortly after he took the reins as mayor.

“Early on in my discussions with the developers of The Sands I identified those as a non-negotiable…I told them that if they wanted my support for their project, these were not to be touched, in fact not only were they not to be touched but they were to be preserved and restored and lit and sort of celebrated.”

“This is not Williamsburg, and it’s not Disney Land,” said Parks. “This is Bethlehem as it has evolved for almost 300 years. We’re taking our heritage and making it a part of everyday life in our community.”

“You’ve got to take what makes you special, what makes you unique,” agreed Callahan, “and try to build on that.”

It’s not like Buffalo isn’t attempting to do the same thing.

While it is true that the Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces that once dominated the Lackawanna skyline are gone forever, not far away the Harbor Development Corporation is spending hundreds of millions of dollars, to reclaim arguably our most important piece of heritage-the Erie Canal, with plans to similarly light up another of our historic treasures, the grain silos.

But the 1,200 acre Bethlehem site in Lackawanna, now mostly vacant, seems destined to remain a place for commercial and industrial use.

“It’s a very difficult site, a very complex site, and it’s privately owned,” said Chris Pawenski, who the Coordinator of the Erie County Industrial Assistance Program serves as the county’s point man for the site’s continued re-development.

“This is probably the largest site in the northeast United States that has rail, a Great Lakes port, and highway access which makes it very unique in terms of its potential for industrial use.”

Pawenski says he knows of no plans to turn this place of crumbling coke ovens into a waterfront playground. Nor does he think there should be.

“We don’t want to compete with the inner harbor. I don’t think the city or the county does… there’s quite a bit of effort already going into that type of thing, so why compete with yourself? And we don’t want to turn it into something that, regrettably, doesn’t generate taxes.”

Meanwhile in Bethlehem, they are poised to continue the transformation.

“I think we’re not going to see any more buildings come down here and all the buildings you see will be used for adaptive re-use, said Callahan. “We’ve never lost our authenticity and our sense of history but we’re also very progressive and very forward minded as a community and I think, to the extent that you can find that right balance for any particular community, that’s really kind of where the magic is.”

As for what he believes the future holds, Parks thinks the possibilities are endless, needing only the two words in the slogan of his organization to summarize them.

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Quotes of Support

"During the 35 years that I taught American and Modern architecture courses at UB I have seen too many fine buildings representing the city's and the region's stratified history lost to specious demolitions. In fact, examples of Beaux-Arts classicism -- the hallmark style of the peak years of Buffalo's and Lackawanna's heyday -- are particularly rare. Just as the headquarters building originally represented the public face of this once flourishing industry so it should continue to represent what was. I fully support the efforts to save this building and see it restored to some sensible alternative use. - Jack Quinan, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and Senior Curator, Darwin Martin House

"I am a forth generation Lackawanna resident. Also a forth generation steelworker. I'm still employed at the lackawanna bar mill now called republic. My father was an asst roller and worked in the tandem mill. He also worked in the coke ovens. My grandfather (his father) started on the cutting line and then was a foreman in the strip mill. My great grandfather was a stove tender in blast furnace and a pipe fitter at the plant. Even my great grandma worked in the plant during the war in the bar mill as a matter of fact in the same building i still work today!! Lackawanna is in my veins to say the least. I look at the old office building in aww and know its somewhere where my whole family has set foot there." - Andrew, Lackawanna resident

"In Rochester, we lost the "structurally sound" Cataract Brewery buildings last year in order for the Genesee Brewery to create yet another parking lot. Despite the fact that we had engaged a developer and had created realistic and feasible plans to put a new roof on one of the structures, place windows in each opening, clean up the exterior, and provide lighting -- all efforts with an eye toward land banking -- once the mayor and several neighborhoods had their way, there was no turning back the machine. And all of this effort, despite the fact that the Rochester Preservation Board voted unanimously to Landmark the buildings. In interviews since the demolition, a great amount of media outlets and radio hosts continue to claim that the Cataract Buildings were on the verge of collapse and that there were no viable offers to purchase the buildings! Not true. Do not let this happen to Bethlehem Steel." - Joel Helfrich, Rochester, NY

"If we let this building be destroyed or sit in decline as the owners have let it, we are saying we do not care about our past or our rich cultural heritage, therefore we do not care about building our cultural tourism industry and other industries that will spring up as a result of beautifying our urban landscape and preserving our cultural icons. And as a result we are saying we do not care about our community now or in the future." - Spenser Morgan

"We foresee a bright future at this most historic site of our shared cultural heritage, and will do what we can to support and promote the rehabilitation of the building. The building can and should be part of the complete revitalization of the the Lake Erie waterfront." - The Board of Directors of the Steel Plant Museum of Western New York, in a letter to the Mayor of Lackawanna

"I am a Canadian that has been following your fight to save this beautiful building from the beginning and I applaud your efforts. I cannot fathom that someone would want to destroy such a beautiful building that is entrenched with the history of Lackawanna/Buffalo region. I am deeply saddened that the Bethlehem Steel Admin Building will be wiped off the Lacakwana/Buffalo landscape forever, its legacy kept alive through stories, archive photos and people's memories. The biggest shame is that I wanted to go out and see this building in person one day! I can only wish that this building saw an alternative fate." - Matthew Zambri on Facebook

"I am very happy someone is doing something to save this beautiful building. It broke my heart when I heard they were going to tare her down. This is an important architectural design and one of its kind. Future architects and artists will lose a treasure if she is destroyed. Not to mention her value as a tourism attraction for Lackawana. People already come from all over the world to see her beautiful Botanical Gardens and the Basilica. Why not direct them to our pretty Lansing C. Holden building and our canals and lake parks? If this building dies so does an opportunity to show the world we have such landmarks of beauty." - Lisa Willis on Facebook

"In speaking to residents of Lackawanna, specifically those living in Bethlehem Park who are former steel plant workers and their families, there was overwhelming support, as you saw via our change.org petition, to save the building. It is beautiful, one-of-a-kind and NOT beyond rehabilitation and reuse. Bethlehem Steel is not only Lackawanna’s history; it is also this country’s. Please respect our heritage.. your heritage.. and the legacy that has been left for us." - Lisa Perillo, in an email to the Mayor of Lackawanna, NY

"This is a very sad legacy for you as Mayor. It saddens me to see the needless destruction of a beautiful piece of history. This is Lackawanna's character. This building is the kind of building that has the potential to make Lackawanna special and set it apart from other suburbs. Modern developments are boring and ugly. Reuse of this building would be so much better. Please rethink your decision while you have the chance." - Elsa J. Schmidt, Esq., in an email to the Mayor of Lackawanna, NY

"Here in Alaska, just outside of Fairbanks is an historical gold dredge site. A tour through the dredge has been a tourist attraction for many years. It's called Gold Dredge #8. I was impressed and amazed when the tour guide told us all the steel to build it came from Bethlehem Steel." - Linda Romanowski Morrisette, in a Facebook comment

"This is still in the hands of Lackawanna, where there are few preservationists and many who just don’t understand how this building could be the centerpiece for revitalizing their city and that stretch of industrial Lake Erie. Please, help all you can." - Will Harnack, Village of Lancaster, NY, Historic Preservation Commission

"The first step in any place’s recovery is embracing and preserving its identity. The empty Bethlehem building is not an embarrassing symbol of decline. It is emblematic of the place which produced the steel for everything from the WWII battleships that obliterated tyranny to the vehicles that powered America’s auto industry. What’s not to be proud of?" - Donn Esmonde, The Buffalo News

"One of Buffalo’s great shames is the 1950 demolition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building. But it also has some significant saves, like Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building. Even children gasp at its ornate engravings and carvings of terra cotta and copper. That building is on a different tour I give, one I’d like to be able to add the Bethlehem Steel Building to. The field where the Larkin Building’s broken pieces were dumped and buried is on the way to the Bethlehem Steel Building. Please help so that my tour’s grand finale isn’t a similar site in Lackawanna." - Erin St. John Kelly, OpEd for The Buffalo News

"The blast furnaces, tall chimneys and grimy buildings are gone, and some would say good riddance. But the elegant and dignified Administration Building, which has stood since the earliest days of the company, should be seen as a symbol honoring all those generations of men and women who worked so hard to support their families and to raise their children to find their own successes and accomplishments. There could be no more beautiful reminder and memorial." - Mary Horowitz, The Buffalo News, Letter to the Editor

Great buildings, even buildings that have endured years of neglect deserve to remain intact whenever possible. When thinking about matters like these, I like to keep the medical concept of 'first do no harm' at the top of my mind. The Bethlehem Steel building is not a symbol of failure. It is a reminder of a glorious past, and something worth protecting for our future. I understand there is money to be made by demolishing this building, but there is little use for an empty lot at the expense of such a beautiful building that in any other city would have already been put to better use. Please, give this time to get better. Once it is gone, it can never come back, and as we've seen with other long lost buildings in WNY, there is always regret. - Mike Baco, WNY resident, in an email to the Mayor of Lackawanna

"The State Historic Preservation Office has determined that the building is structurally sound and there's no reason it needs to come down. There's no reason for the mayor to be pushing for this demolition at this point." -Dana Saylor, Historian, Old Time Roots

"I don’t see the need to tear it down. It’s a national landmark, it’s part of our history here in Buffalo.” - Joe Peluso, son of a former Bethlehem Steel employee

“It’s not going to come back to that or anything, but we have to do something to tie Lackawanna in to all the good stuff happening in South Buffalo here. This would do it for us.” - Andrea Haxton, former Councilmember, City of Lackawanna

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